U-T’s 2012 Persons of the Year

U-T San Diego

Navy SEALs — resourceful, courageous, devoted and disciplined — represent the best qualities of our community and our nation. Whether in high-profile operations like tracking down and killing Osama bin Laden or strategic efforts like seizing and preserving power plants in the opening days of the Iraq War in 2003, Navy SEALs are the silent professionals whose sacrifices protect our values and our nation. It is our privilege that so many of these special forces are trained at the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado.

When something goes horribly wrong — as it did in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11-12 — and SEALs die as a result, it leaves us with a deep sense of remorse and an obligation to honor their sacrifices.

That was our reaction to the deaths of Glen Doherty, 42, of Encinitas, and Tyrone Woods, 41, of Imperial Beach, former SEALs turned CIA contractors who were killed after hours fighting heavily armed terrorists who had already succeeded in killing U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and information officer Sean Smith, who also had roots in San Diego.

It is why U-T San Diego has chosen to honor Doherty and Woods as our Persons of the Year for 2012.

Their deaths came as they defended their fellow Americans at a U.S. building after the main U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi had been attacked and set afire. An official account released by the State Department says they died shortly after 6 a.m. Sept. 12 when three mortar rounds struck the roof of the building, where the men were in defensive positions.

But the story that has been told to the men’s families since soon after that terrible event — coming from both government and unofficial sources — is far more dramatic and wrenching.

On Sept. 11, aware that it was the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Ambassador Stevens held all his scheduled meetings at the fortified compound that housed the U.S. consulate. An uneventful evening came to an abrupt end when dozens of heavily armed men broke through the front gate and began lighting buildings in the compound on fire. Officials notified Washington and called Doherty, Woods and other members of a quick-response team at a U.S. facility a little more than a mile away.

Security agents already at the compound took Stevens and Smith to a safe room inside a residence building in the compound. Attackers managed to get into the building but couldn’t breach the safe room, so they lit the building on fire.

While the quick-response team was still making its way to the consulate, agents pulled Smith — dead from smoke inhalation — out of the residence. Stevens could not be found. His body was later identified at a hospital where he had been taken by good Samaritans.

When Doherty and Young reached the smoky compound, they worked to quickly evacuate the surviving Americans to the second U.S. facility. It was there, early the following morning, that the terrorists launched their second coordinated attack – the one that killed the ex-SEALs.

Glen Doherty’s brother, Greg, a Marin County teacher, told us, “His actions were heroic from the start. We knew very early on he had rushed in to help that night, that he got 20 to 30 people out of the consulate.”

Tyrone Woods was found “slumped over his machine gun, which was caked with blood. He had continued to fire until he had no blood left and was unable to fire anymore,” Charles Woods, the former SEAL’s father, told The Washington Times.

Doherty’s family has no time for those who see the attack in a political context and who demand that heads roll in the Obama administration. His sister, Kate Quigley, of Marblehead, Mass., urges those who care about her brother to visit a website created in his honor,

“It’s clear that we could have been more prepared, but hindsight is 20/20. The primary responsibility is on the terrorists, not the American defense,” said Greg Doherty.

Tyrone Woods’ father is far more critical of the U.S. government. His son, stuck in Benghazi, died many hours after the initial attack. Charles Woods told a U-T reporter that there had been an official cover-up. “When a mission is compromised, within minutes — not hours — they extract them. Seven and a half hours, and they still have not extracted him. ... I have correspondence from people who are in the military, and they tell me extraordinary measures are always taken to rescue. And they didn’t do that with Ty, and there’s a reason why. We’re not getting the truth from anyone.”

It is U-T San Diego’s view that the truth needs to come out about what happened at Benghazi.

Today, our focus is on the victims, their good works, their lives of public service, their love for their families and devotion to their friends. These were individuals who inspired those around them.

“Glen believed in what he was doing. He really wanted to make a difference in the world. He liked the people he was with and believed in the mission he was on,” Greg Doherty told us. “But he was more than his job.”

In his 42 years, Doherty found time to become an accomplished pilot, skier, cook, white-water rafting guide and triathlete. After serving as a SEAL for 10 years, he co-authored “21st-Century Sniper: A Complete Practical Guide.”

“Glen was a super fun and caring person,” his brother said. “He spent a lot of time cultivating friends [and had] an ever-widening circle of interesting, talented, good people around him.”

Tyrone Woods was more low-key, and nearly all his family has kept a low profile in the aftermath of the tragedy. He was a SEAL for two decades before going to work as a CIA contractor in 2010. Woods was beloved by those who knew him as a devoted family man, a friendly and reassuring presence in his Imperial Beach neighborhood — and as a great patriot.

“He had the hands of a healer as well as the arms of a warrior, earning distinction as a registered nurse and certified paramedic,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an official tribute to Woods on Sept. 14.

It is difficult to adequately convey how much we owe these men and others in the SEAL community who have died in service to country. As Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg, in dedicating the site of a Civil War battle, “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.”

So we will simply state that Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods are heroes who died in defense of America’s ideals after saving the lives of many of their countrymen. Whatever one’s politics or larger views about the Benghazi scandal, no one should forget this central fact. Doherty and Woods are U-T San Diego’s Persons of the Year for 2012.